Abstract— Recycling of aluminum alloys has been shown to
provide major economic and environmental benefits. In addition to
energy savings, increasing the use of recycled metal is also quite
important from an ecological standpoint. This research work has
investigated the use of these broken bottles and glasses as
reinforcement material for the production of particles reinforced
aluminum scrap matrix composite.
This work focuses on the fabrication of aluminum alloy matrix
composites reinforced with 5,10,15,20 wt% glass particulates of
90 μm using stir casting route. The mechanical properties like
ultimate tensile strength, ultimate compressive strength, percentage
elongation and impact energy of the unreinforced alloy and
composites have been measured. The microstructure and mechanical
properties of the fabricated composite were analyzed.
The results have shown an increasing in mechanical properties
such as ultimate tensile strength, compression strength and at the
expense of percentage elongation and impact energy for composite
material with increasing reinforcement materials content.
Microstructural studies have been carried out to understand the nature
of structure.
Keywords— Aluminium Alloy, Al Scrap, Mechanical
Properties, Wasted Glasses.
I. INTRODUCTION
HE composites posses improved physical and mechanical
properties such as superior strength to weight ratio, good
ductility, high strength and modulus, low thermal
expansion coefficient, excellent wear resistance, corrosion
resistance, high temperature creep resistance and better fatigue
strength. Metal-Matrix Composites (MMCs) are most
promising in achieving enhanced mechanical properties.
Aluminium Matrix Composites (AMCs) reinforced with
particles and whiskers are widely used for high performance
applications such as in automotive, military, aerospace and
electricity industries because of improved mechanical
properties [1 ].
Aluminium has been recycled since its first commercial
production and today recycled aluminium accounts for one-
third of global aluminium consumption. Anything made of
aluminium can be recycled repeatedly; not only cans, but also
Dr. Jameel Habeeb Ghazi, College of Materials Engineering, Babylon
University, Iraq. e-mail: ([email protected]). phone:0096478 01633179.
aluminium foil, plates, window frames, garden furniture and
automotive components can be melted down and re-used.
Aluminium is a sustainable material, whose recyclability and
applications justify the high energy requirement of primary
aluminium production. The transport sector is ore cast to be
the most rapidly expanding end-use sector due to the
lightweight and energy saving qualities of the material.
Aluminium is relatively unique in being highly economic to
recycle. Metal can be reclaimed and refined for further use at
an energy cost of only 5 per cent of that required to produce
the same quantity of aluminium from its ore. There has been a
healthy secondary metal industry for many years and as
refining techniques improve the use that can be made of
reclaimed aluminium will increase from its present usage in
Europe of 40% of all metal currently processed [2,3].
Glasses fall within the subgroup of ceramics called
amorphous ceramics. They include those as ‘obsidian’ which
occur naturally, and man-made glasses used for the
manufacture of bottles, windows and lenses. Recycling of the
broken glasses for production of new products could reduce
the challenge posed to the environment by this form of solid
waste. Unfortunately this form of solid waste is not
biodegradable neither is it water soluble. The option left is
therefore recycling to clear it from the environment [4].
Different methods have been adopted for fabrication of
metal matrix composites. Among them, the conventional
foundry based processes are more favorable in obtaining near
net shape components at high production rates and low costs.
In recent years, the stir casting technique has attracted the
interest of many researchers. Rheocasting, Compo casting,
Disintegrated melt deposition are the variants of the stir
casting technique. This Technique involves incorporating the
ceramic particles into the melt and stirring by means of
mechanical impeller [5].
Paul et al. reported a higher tensile strength and hardness
for (AMCs/glass) composites [4]. Prabhakar K. studied
mechanical properties of E-glass short fibers and fly ash
reinforced Al 7075 hybrid (MMCs), The results of their
investigation are found to have improved tensile strength and
compression strength of composite [6]. Aluminum alloy (356)
reinforced glass and graphite particle tend to offer
enhancement properties proceed by vortex method [7]. Some
of the author have investigated the effect of thermal ageing on
mechanical and microstructural properties of Al/glass [8],[9].
Fabrication and Mechanical Properties of
Economic Composite Materials Using
Alumimium Scrap and Wasted Glass
Dr. Jameel Habeeb Ghazi Al-Imari
T
3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore
9
This work adopts production economic composite material
from aluminium alloy scrap and broken bottles by stir casting
technique and improving mechanical properties of composite.
Therefore the consumption of aluminium scrap and bottles
broken thereby reducing the load of the solid state waste on
the environment.
II. EXPERIMENTAL PROCEDURE
A. Materials
The materials used for the production of the aluminium-
glass composite material included scrap aluminium alloys
(Electricity wires damaged, household utensils and Beverage
cans) as matrix materials, While broken bottles as
reinforcement materials. The aluminum scrap which cuts to
pieces was preheated in the furnace to a temperature of 300 o
C
to dry off any oily dirt coatings that may be present on the
surface of the products, The pieces of aluminium scrap was
heated to 720 oC then slowly cool in furnace , in order to get
the ingot alloy. The chemical composition of aluminium alloy
is shown in table (1). The broken bottles were crushed and
pulverized. The pulverized powder was sieved with 90 µm
sieve aperture. The -90 µm (passing) particles size was used
for the research work. Table (2) shows the chemical
composition of bottles broken.
TABLE I
COMPOSITION OF ALUMINIUM SCRAP BY WEIGHT PERCENTAGE.
TABLE II
COMPOSITION OF BROKEN BOTTLE BY WEIGHT PERCENTAGE.
B. Composite preparation
The ingot alloy (matrix) is shown in table (1) was melted at
720 o
C in an electric furnace. The powder glass reinforcement)
was preheated to a temperature of about 150 oC to set it free
from physical moisture and then the reinforcement particles
were added according to the required quantity. After that, the
molten was stirred by 300 rpm speed for four minutes by using
vortex (stir) technique to ensure optimal distribution of glass
particles. A small amount of Mg was added to ensure good
wettability of particles with molten metal. Then melt was
poured into a preheated metal molds.
Aluminium alloy composites containing various glasses
contents, namely 5, 10,15 and 20% by weight were fabricate
and tested, and their properties were compared with those of
unreinforced matrix.
C. Testing
All tested were conducted in accordance with ASTM
standards. Tensile tests were performed at room temperature
using machine in accordance with ASTM E8-95 standards
and ductility (in terms of percentage elongation) was
measured. The tensile specimens of diameter 12.5 mm and
gauge length 62.5 mm were machined from the composite
with gauge length of specimen parallel to longitudinal axis of
the casting. The compression tests were conducted as per
ASTM- E9-95 standards. The specimens were used of
diameter 15 mm and length 20 mm machined from cast
composites. Charpy impact tests were conducted on notched
specimens according to ASTM E32-20 standard. The
dimensions of the specimens machined for the impact
tests were 55×10×10 mm with notch depth of 2 mm and
notch tip radius of 0.25 mm at 45o angle.
Samples for the microscopic examination were prepared by
standard metallographic procedures etched with killer' s agent
and examined under optical microscope.
III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
A. Microstructure analysis
The optical photomicrographs of the fabricated AMCs are
shown in Fig.1. It is observed from the figure that glass
particulate are dispersed uniformly in the aluminum matrix at
all weight percentage. The size of the glass particles appears to
be uniform throughout the aluminum matrix. This can be
attributed to the effective stirring action and the use of
appropriate process parameters. Homogeneous distribution of
particles is to enhance the mechanical properties of the matrix
alloy.
(a) (b)
(c) (d) Fig.1 Optical micrographs at X100. (a) Al Alloy with 5%
glass. (b) Al Alloy with 10 % glass. (c) Al Alloy with 15
% glass. (d) Al Alloy with 20 % glass.
B. Ultimate tensile strength
Fig. 2 shows the relation between weight percentage of
glass particulates and tensile strength of fabricated
composites. It is observed that the Al alloy has tensile strength
of 83.2 MPa. Tensile strength increases about 35% by adding
the reinforcement particles from 0 to 20 weight percentage.
Al Cr Mg Mn Cu Fe Si
balance
0.008
1.120
0.283
0.075
0.319
0.140
MgO CaO Na2O SiO2
5
9
15
71
3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore
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The increase in tensile strength is attributed to increase in
grain boundary area due to grain refinement, at the interface
and effective transfer of applied tensile load to the uniformly
distributed well bonded reinforcement. Dispersion of hard
ceramic particles in soft ductile matrix results in improvement
in strength. This may be attributed to large residual stress
developed during solidification and due to mismatch of
thermal expansion between ceramic particles and soft
aluminium matrix. This resulting in misfit strain due to the
differential thermal contraction at the interface between the
matrix and the reinforcements. The misfit strain and resultant
misfit stress, generates dislocations. This increased dislocation
density, generated to accommodate the misfit strain provides a
significant contribution to strengthening of metal matrix The
increase in UTS may be due to the glass particle acting as
barriers to dislocation in the microstructure. This dislocation
increases the dislocation density, which provides appositive
contribution to strength of Al matrix composite. There is
decrease in the inter particle distance between the
reinforcement particles, which causes increased resistance to
dislocation motion as the particulate content is increased.
During the deformation either the matrix material has to push
the hard particulate further or it has to bypass the particles for
deformation, during the process the dislocation piles up
[10,11].
Fig. 2 Effect of glass on ultimate tensile strength of Al alloy.
C. Ultimate compressive strength
The Fig. (3) explains the effect of particulate reinforcement
on ultimate compressive strength. The increase in ultimate
compressive strength was about 25% as glass particulate was
increased from 0 to 20 wt.%, Whereas the Al matrix alloy was
owned ultimate compressive strength of 103.7 MPa. The
increase in compressive strength is due to the increase in the
density of the composite material. It is shown that addition of
ceramic reinforcement to a soft matrix increases its density
and there by its compressive strength. Similar observations
were reported in the work [10].
Fig. 2 Effect of glass on ultimate compressive strength of
Al alloy.
D. Percentage Elongation
From fig.(4) Percentage elongation was found to decrease
with increase in glass particles addition. This could be
attributed to the improved internal stress, due to the particulate
reinforcement, having adverse effect on the ductility of the
specimen. Increase in the composition of glass particles in
aluminum matrix from 0 to 5, 10, 15 and 20 wt.% caused the
percentage elongation at fracture of specimen to decrease from
11.5 to 10.7, 9.3, 8.6, and 8.2 respectively.
Fig. 4 Effect of glass on percentage elongation of Al alloy.
E. Impact Energy
0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight percentage of glass
60.00
80.00
100.00
120.00
Ulti
mat
e te
nsile
stre
ngth
(MP
a)
0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight percentage of glass
80.00
100.00
120.00
140.00
Ulti
mat
e co
mpr
essi
ve s
treng
th (M
Pa)
0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight Percentage of glass
6.00
8.00
10.00
12.00
Per
cent
age
elon
gatio
n
3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore
11
Fig. (5) shows the variation of the Impact Energy of
unreinforced and reinforced specimens. Impact Energy
decreased from 25.7, 23.5, 22.9, 20.2 and 18.6 joules with
increasing the weight percentage of glass from 0 to 5, 10, 15
and 20 wt.% respectively. The brittle nature of the reinforcing
materials (glass) plays a significant role in degrading the
impact energy of the composite, since the unreinforced alloy
have the highest impact energy, indicating that it is the
toughest of them all.
Fig. 5 Effect of glass on impact energy of Al alloy.
IV. CONCLUSION
The conclusions derived from this study are as follows:
1) Using stir casting method , wasted glasses can be
successfully introduced in Aluminium scrap matrix to
fabricate economic composite material.
2) The tensile strength of composites found increased with
increased glass content.
3) The compression strength of composite found increasing
with increased reinforcements in the composites.
4) The percentage elongation of the composite decreased with
increase in weight percentage of glass.
4) The impact energy of the composite decreased with
increase in weight percentage of glass.
5) The microstructural studies revealed the uniform
distribution of the particles in the matrix system.
REFERENCES
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Mechanical and Wear Properties of 6061 Al Alloy Metal Matrix
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no. 1, PP. 1-4.
[2] R. Cobden, A. Banbury, “Aluminium: Physical Properties,
Characteristics and Alloys, EAA - European Aluminium Association”,
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[3] The Aluminum Association September, “Aluminum: The Element of Sustainability,ANorth American Aluminum Industry Sustainability
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[4] A. I. Paul, G.B. Nyior, O.O. Alabi, E.E. Anbua, J. Ogbodo & S. Segun,
“Solid Waste Management:The use of BrokenWaste Bottles as
Reinforcement Agent for Aluminum Matrix Composite”, International
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[9] A. P. Ihom, N. G. Bem, E. E. Anbua & J. N. Ogbodo, “The Effect of
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Characterization and Engineering, 2012, vol.11, pp.919-923.
[10] M. B.
Arun Kumar and R. P. Swamy, “Evaluation Of Mechanical
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[11] D. Ramesh , R.P. Swamy & T.K. Chandrashekar , “ Effect of
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0.00 4.00 8.00 12.00 16.00 20.00Weight Percentage of glass
12.00
16.00
20.00
24.00
28.00
Impa
ct e
nerg
y (J
oule
s)
3rd International Conference on Mechanical, Automobile and Robotics Engineering (ICMAR'2014) Feb. 11-12, 2014 Singapore
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